← Chapter II | Archive | Chapter IV →

A month in Acrya marked the point of no return. I ought to have left the morning Nicomedes invited me to walk along the city wall under the pretence of watching for the ever-expected danger. Acrya had gained another ally, willing now to break their neutrality after seven long years, and the city’s spirits were elevated higher than my wings once took me.

Nicomedes had been pensive all morning. He walked with his hands clasped behind his back, shoulders hunched, a pose most unbecoming of a king. I did not help him by urging him to share his thoughts.

Summer was shifting. The days grew shorter. In time, the war would switch focus from prowess on the battlefield to domesticities in the encampments and the city, resources stretched thin to survive the biting winter. Many of Soteris’ soldiers and allies would return to their homes, leaving only a scattering of soldiers to show they hadn’t surrendered.

War was strange like that. Humans claimed they had no choice but to wage it, that there was no other way to preserve their pride, loyalty, and safety, yet they ran it to a schedule. They laid down their arms in mutual, tacit agreement, only engaging in the occasional skirmish to break up the dreary days.

“Novem,” Nicomedes said as though in greeting. “I have something of considerable weight to ask you.”

“Most things we discuss are of a similar importance,” I said.

A smile crinkled the king’s face, soon smoothed over by the gravity of his situation.

“I have only two children. For the longest time, I believed I would have only one, until Lycus was born a decade after his sister. Their mother was lost to us when he was only seven, but… They have done well. Both of them. Lycus has made a fine match in Gallus. The two were childhood friends, you realise, and Gallus’ father has been a steadfast ally to me since the day I took the throne. I could not be better pleased for my son or my kingdom and truly look forward to the day when I may call Gallus son, too,” Nicomedes said, pacing faster now. I trailed behind, letting him gather the rest of his speech in his mind. “But my daughter, well. You have got to know Lev, these last weeks. I fear I have pushed her too hard, too far. I fear I have made too much of omens and made her believe her life’s service is in warfare alone.

“And I am proud of her, I am. You’ve seen her; the world has not known such a warrior in generations. But there comes a time – and she is to be Queen of Acrya, with all the duties that entails – there comes a time when one must shift their focus from what they can do to defend their city on the battlefield to what they can do to strengthen it from within its walls. Lev knows how to fight but ruling is, perhaps, another matter.

“If Lycus chooses to stay in Acrya, she will have his support. If not—well.”

He stopped to rub his short, bristled beard, then stood straight, looking over his shoulder for an answer.

“What is your question?” I said.

His face fell. He thought it a refusal, politeness bought through wilful ignorance.

“I believe it impudent of me to ask. You are an angel, after all,” Nicomedes chided himself.

“Ask your question, king.”

Taking a breath deep enough to bellow to his people that enemy forces were heading for the city with a legion of battering rams, Nicomedes said, “I would not seek to keep you here against your will. We both know that I could not. I am honoured you have spent these last weeks in Acrya and hope to create a bond between my people and the divine. I believe the future of Acrya – that its victory over those who would see it conquered and ruined, its people murdered and enslaved – rests in your hands.”

Again, it was no question.

“I thought your daughter would lead you to victory,” I said.

“Indeed,” he said, and then I understood. He need not have continued, yet said, “I would be honoured if you would marry my daughter.”

Here is where I should have paused. Here is where I should have left the city and my responsibilities behind. But I had only then begun to live amongst humanity and knew only that a king’s child married whoever was chosen for them. Some would offer their future heir a choice of suitors, but only when each weighed the same in the king’s estimation.

“Yes,” I said.

Nicomedes flinched, hearing a refusal before he parsed the words.

“You will?”

“I owe your people a debt of gratitude for releasing me from the earth,” I said.

The king clasped my hands. He told me how he’d fasted for two nights and prayed to god and the ancestors for an answer; no matter where his meditations took him, all his wanderings returned him to the very same point. He was at once doubled-over with gratitude and convinced it was the immutable path fate had set us on.

It was no concern of mine who won the war. Whether it was Acrya, Soteris’ forces, or another party taking advantage of the unrest to claim Acrya with a quick, decisive strike, meant nothing to me. If I had a choice, I might ask that the war go forgotten and the soldiers return to their homes and fields, but humans so love their dichotomies. Victory and defeat. Life and death. Who was I to deny them that?

Nicomedes led me to the throne room, assuring me Lev would meet us there. She was nowhere to be seen. Without needing to ask a soul, Nicomedes made for the regia gates where his daughter, clad in full armour, was loading weapons onto her horse. There were more soldiers with her than the small party that had brought her to the regia. Many were there to see her off, mostly guards designated to the city and high house, but amongst them were captains who’d returned to Acrya in need of her counsel. Eleni stood closest to Lev and was the first to see the king approach.

Eleni cleared her throat and all turned towards Nicomedes. They did not regard him with anything close to disrespect but it was clear their loyalty had been forged in battle with their future queen.

“Lev,” Nicomedes said, voice low. “What are you doing? I thought we were to meet in the throne room.”

Lev held her plumed helmet between her hands and deigned look over her shoulder at her father.

“As did I. I waited more than a full hour,” she said. “I do not have time to waste, king.”

“And where are you going?”

“Is it not obvious? Back to the battlefield. Back to my soldiers. I have left them for an entire month and will not desert them any longer,” Lev said, placing her helmet atop her head.

Her dark, wavy hair disappeared under it, escaping in tufts around the edges. It changed the shape of her face; it was Lev as she saw herself.

“You are injured,” her father pointed out.

Lev raised her brow. She had not worn bandages around her arm or thigh in days and the wounds were healing well.

“I barely limp. I have been injured far worse than this without retreating to the city and I can ride a horse well enough. If anything, it will make confronting Soteris’ soldiers something close to a challenge.”

A hearty murmur of agreement rippled through Lev’s soldiers. Lev had addressed her father thus before and he’d relented in the past, knowing she belonged beyond the city walls.

This time, I stood at his side.

“You are not to leave the city. Come. Speak with me,” he said.

Lev, future queen and king’s daughter, knew she could not disobey such a direct, final order, least of all before her soldiers. She could not allow any weakness in her father’s rule, even if that meant swallowing her pride and bloodlust.

Removing her helm and holding it to her hip, she said, “Eleni, continue preparations. Take care of Agro,” and patted her horse.

She stormed towards the throne room. Her boots thudded and her armour clattered. Conversations fell silent in her wake and all watched with interest they dared not voice. The king was more graceful in his journey through the regia, though he commanded no less awe.

“Why is the angel here?” Lev demanded once the three of us were alone in the throne room. Nicomedes had not taken his seat, though Lev sat on the edge of the dais. “Is this your new shadow, father? Can you not berate your own child without the divine standing over you?”

Nicomedes cleared his throat, apologetic on his daughter’s behalf.

Lev was, as she had been since we met, an anomaly to me. I am not omniscient, not even god is, but I have always known what is needful for me to know. I am often aware of more than a person knows about themselves, but Lev was a mystery. I did not know her age until that very morning when Nicomedes mentioned that Lycus, twenty-one, was ten years her junior.

But Lev was not empty. She was not all silence and sinew. A force neither of us understood roiled within her and she had dedicated much of her life to containing it. Her prowess on the battlefield was no wonder. She was not impious; she followed the rites and rituals of her ancestors, obeyed her king and offered libations to the dead whenever she took up a glass of wine or water; yet she did not revere me as the rest of Acrya did.

Lev spoke as though I was not there.

She had not seen me pulled from the earth. Perhaps she did not believe I was the angel I claimed to be.

“I am not here to berate you, daughter,” Nicomedes said. “I bring good news. A second omen was revealed to me through nights of fasting and prayer.”

“What now?” she asked, sighing.

“Novem has agreed to marry you,” he said, not wanting Lev’s ire to grow.

Lev laughed. It echoed through the chamber.

“Be serious.”

“When have I ever joked with you, daughter?”

Lev opened her mouth. She did not laugh again.

Her eyes flitted over to me, narrowing. I did not know what she wanted from me and so said nothing.

“This is ridiculous. I am a soldier, father. I belong on the battlefield,” Lev argued. “You would take me away from all of that now, at this critical juncture?”

In those days, the people of Acrya and much of western Laenia believed that a person must leave a war as they entered it. Betrothal and marriage were forbidden to those in armour. In many cities, victories were celebrated by dozens of marriages taking place in a single day, where each newlywed served as a guest at the others’ weddings and the entire city came out to wish them well.

“You are the daughter of Acrya. You belong where you are most useful,” he said.

“Hah. Yes. Well, easy for you to say! You spend your days within these well-guarded walls, mulling over maps and drinking wine, while I fight your battles and come home riddled in arrow-wounds,” Lev said. She slipped from the dais and paced the room. She did not pace as her father had that morning, slow and nervous, but with a frantic energy she struggled to contain. “Two years ago, the Misenans infiltrated our camp, killed eighteen of my best soldiers, and left the finest general Acrya has ever known with their throat slit at my bedside. All of this on the Day of Ites, as though spilling blood was not a great sin.

“They knew we would honour the day to our last breaths and took advantage of that. They slighted god for a cheap, ruthless advantage and threw away all dignity and piety. We fought them back with shields and blunt weapons like hapless farmers, holding them off. We were trapped there for nine days, our food supplies lasted four of those, and the bodies of our comrades festered around us. Do you think I want to return to that? Do you think I have no desire to sit at the hearth and feast as you do night after night? I do what I must, father. I do it for all of Acrya, you first of all.”

Lev’s footsteps sounded when her voice fell silent.

“I have fought wars, daughter,” Nicomedes said in a low voice. “Both as a king and a king’s son. I know there is no glory beyond these walls.”

“Then why force this upon me? You spent my entire life raising me around an omen and now think it possible to take it all back? Does this new prophecy better suit your sensibilities?”

Nicomedes rounded the room and climbed the hidden steps of the dais. Lev only stopped her wild pacing to watch him lower himself onto his throne, where her attention was better kept.

“You may call me a coward, too old and weak to fight my own battles, but you will not call me impious,” Nicomedes said in a voice that had once made his enemies flee before him. “I do not pick and choose. Such things are not for mortals. Do you not see, daughter? This new prophecy complements the first: already, we have gained two new allies in a single month. This is how you win the war, how you protect your kingdom. You marry Novem, form the bond, and all else will follow.”

Lev clenched her jaw too tightly for it to tremble. She shifted her weight onto the leg that wasn’t wounded.

“And this was a true prophecy? The spirits spoke to you?”

“As much of a king’s education is in reading these omens as it is on the battlefield. I am only a mouthpiece,” Nicomedes said.

“And now you tell me I am to marry this—this thing you dug out of the ground? It is not even human! You take its every word as truth, proclaim to have an angel in Acrya, but what proof do you have?”

“Lev,” Nicomedes warned.

“She doesn’t even have wings,” Lev spat, pointing an accusing finger my way.

“They were torn from me,” I said.

I’d intended to be helpful.

Lev approached the dais, slammed her open palms upon it, and said, “Who has ever heard of an angel without wings?”

If Nicomedes gave a reply, the argument would never end. He had been there with his daughter before, albeit not on such extreme, life-altering terms. He was furious with her, ashamed she had spoken of an angel thus, but knew it was not the time to reprimand her. Lev would ultimately do what was ordered of her and deserved the time to process how drastically her life would change.

“You have avoided Novem at every opportunity. I think it is time for the pair of you to get to know one another.”

He rose from his throne, both hands gripping the arms, and for the first time, Lev saw her father for the age he was. It ensured her silence. She watched him leave, gait slow and certain, and did not speak another word.

The two of us were left alone.

“You do not have to marry me if you don’t wish to,” I said. “I will retract my agreement.”

Lev turned from the empty throne like a startled cat.

“You think it’s that easy, do you? You think I can ignore an omen from my king and not have my people suffer for it?” she demanded.

“You believe in omens?”

“Of course I do. I am not an idiot. Now I cannot step onto the battlefield without handing victory to that brute, Soteris!”

Lev pulled her arm guards off and threw them to the ground. The clatter of metal on marble did not sate the frustration growing within her. She began to pace again, hands curled into fists, and muttered curses under her breath.

“Don’t worry,” I said, seeking to reassure her. “I won’t take your virginity.”

That brought her to a halt.

Slowly, as if praying she had misheard me, she said, “What?”

“I understand your beliefs. I respect them. The people of Laenia consider virginity a boon in battle. I expect you have taken an oath as many high-ranking soldiers do and I would not ask that you forfeit it.”

Lev charged towards me, finger held out with as much force as any sword. She jabbed my chest, expecting me to back away, but found me unmoving for all the bruises she had left.

“What do—what would—” Lev began, but her snarl did not belie embarrassment. “Surely angels are not even equipped for such matters.”

“We are,” I said, not blinking. “This body is prey to numerous physical sensations, though we cannot multiply. It was the starting framework for your kind, adjusted as god thought necessary.”

Lev backed away, barking a laugh. She tangled her hands in her hair and walked circles thus.

“This is ridiculous,” she said, speaking not to me. “It is ridiculous and it was inevitable. Had the war not continued for as long as it has, had it never broken out, I would have been married off years ago. But at least it would have been to a human. Still, this is—it is my duty. God! To have been born a peasant.”

I watched her wordless arguments with herself, lip curling, eyes darting every which way. I wanted to wait until her frustration had dissipated, but I could not wait forever.

“If we marry, ensuring the omen comes to pass, victory will be Acrya’s. If another war comes to Acrya, you will be able to fight, entering and leaving the battlefield as a married woman,” I said.

Again, it was meant as a kindness. I wanted to reassure Lev that her life as she knew it was not over, and that I would make little material difference to her. I was foolish for attempting to soothe her when she was in that state, or any.

“Oh, wonderful! I shall ask Soteris to end the war with us, return to Misenum for the winter, and then start a second conflict, that I might fight on a technicality. Do you think I want another war, Alatus?”

“Novem,” I said.

“What?”

“My name is Novem.”

“Does that matter?”

“Yes. Your father said he wished for us to get to know one another,” I said. “And it is my name. I do not call you Human.”

“Get to know one another!” Lev said, laughing. “Very well, Novem. Since you seem to know so much about me, as I’m certain the king has little respect for my privacy, tell me: how did you lose those wings of yours? You are, what—a fallen angel? Disgraced? Defeated? Why were your wings taken from you?”

The bones sprouting from my back twitched as they had not since I was first pulled from the earth. I had accepted my wings’ absence, for denial would not cause them to grow anew; it had never occurred to me that I ought to miss them.

But Lev’s words could not be ignored. I could not deny her now I had put her in this position.

“I cannot say,” I said. Seeing as this didn’t satisfy her, I added, “I have not searched for the answer.”

Strange. I had not considered the why until then. I only knew that it had happened and I was now an angel with only soft, downy feathers pushing through my skin to show for it.

“You don’t know? Well. There’s no saying how many rocks were dropped upon your head when you were buried,” Lev said. The thought of my distress seemed to calm her. “Who did it to you, then? What does Acrya truly have to fear?”

That I could answer.

It had not left my mind in centuries, even as I willed all parts of myself to slow and fade beneath the earth. Lev saw that I knew. She saw it immediately and I would not do her the disservice of lying to her.

“I can tell you that. I will tell you, once we are married,” I said.

I did not wish to hold my words hostage. I did not believe they would be an incentive to Lev, enough to lessen the single, devastating blow that had changed the entirety of her life in mere moments, but I was not ready to speak the truth out loud.

Lev folded her arms over her chest. An excess of frustrated energy churned within her still, but curiosity took the place of anger.

“Well, Novem,” she said, turning to leave. “I hope it will be worth the wait.”

Subscribe now

tip jar

← Chapter I | Archive | Chapter III →

I stayed in Acrya not because I did not have a plan, but because it had not yet occurred to me to form one. There was no burning desire for revenge to make my every waking moment a slight to the justice I had not yet sought, and time did not slip through my fingers. I couldn’t say whether I wished to obtain such a thing, nor if I deserved to. It was not that I was a creature of patience, only that I was older than the very concept.

I was given chambers alongside the king and his family. Little was asked directly of me, for the people were content to brand me a mystery, an omen only the anointed few could read. Humanity is aware of my kind in general but knows nothing of the specifics. They understand we help keep the world in order but do not think of us as having domains; they imagine god arbitrarily handing out orders, all of them fulfilled without question.

It did not matter how long I had been buried. I, Alatus IX, had not been known to humanity, and so could not be forgotten.

Better still, I could not be remembered.

On the fifth day after my unearthing, Laius of Cerbae came with seven soldiers to the city gates. He was an ally of Queen Soteris of Misenum, the woman who had started the war against Acrya, only now he wished to make a treaty with Nicomedes. It was clear why. Word spreads especially fast during wartime and none cared to discuss anything but the Angel of Acrya.

Laius’ alliance and fealty were accepted. I stood watch as the two kings made their promises to one another, letting them assume my presence was innately sacred. All the while, Lev, refusing to rest, glowered at Laius. They had come to blows on the battlefield before. Lev thought his morals as honed as his swordsmanship, muttering that eight of her soldiers had fought back thirty of his.

In the evenings, I joined the household for dinner, where they ate as a family. Danae dined with the king and his children, elevated in status in such company. It was not my appearance that brought her to the table, rather Lev’s unwanted retreat from the battlefield.

Lev ate enough for an army. Each day, she proclaimed she was fit to return to the frontlines and oversee what was surely the last of the struggle. The war had little effect on the food stores of Acrya, save the occasional stolen sheep, and within the regia itself the only true sign of warfare was Lev’s sullen disposition. She did not join the conversation, though she listened closely whenever Danae spoke, and scolded her brother for no reason I could comprehend. I ate more often than I didn’t, finding it easy to replicate human behaviour, and took in what conversation I could. Soon it became clear I was missing a vital truth, or else it was being kept from me.

For all the people of the regia, Danae first and foremost, told me of the seven years of war their people had endured, I could not find a reason for the fighting. I could not trace the bloodshed back to its source. There is rarely any reason for war that does not defy itself, but here its existence was especially tenuous. The origins changed depending on who told the story and the servants and soldiers constantly corrected one another.

It was as though the war was born of a song and had been waged hundreds of years ago. Each person who recounted the tale added a verse from their own imagination.

“Why are you fighting this war?” I asked. “What brought it to your city gates?”

I spoke abruptly, as I always did. People were content to imagine me a statue, silent, blind; there to be looked upon, revered, without reflecting anything back at them; speaking only to answer prayers.

“It is because Soteris of Misenum wishes to make Acrya part of her own domain. The woods here are the best in all Laenia,” Nicomedes said.

He spoke slowly and not without humouring me. I had been told all of this before.

“The soil here is good,” I agreed. “But why has Soteris persisted for so long? Wars between kingdoms of your size rarely stretch beyond the first winter. Why have you not made a treaty?”

Jumping in to explain, Lycus said, “Well, that would be down to Soteris. She’d never settle for peace, those Misenan types have battle in their blood. It’s death on the battlefield or utter domination. Now they’ve started they won’t stop, even if it takes decades.”

Misenan land began all of thirty miles northward. Self-imposed borders were all that divided the people of Laenia. Lycus let out an awkward laugh and drank deep from his goblet. King Nicomedes nodded his agreement, only for Lev to snort a laugh.

“Why are you lying to an angel?” she asked.

She directed her question at her father, not caring that Lycus had been the one to speak. Danae placed a hand on Lev’s elbow in a steady show of support. King Nicomedes took it as a reprimand, not insolence. He lifted a hand, dismissing the serving boy and the woman tending to the hearth. Once they were gone, door closed behind them, the king pushed aside his meal and knitted his fingers together.

“Please accept my apologies, Novem. I ought to have told you before, but part of me wanted to believe you already knew. The other part was determined to keep the secrets this family has guarded for generations,” he said.

Lycus pushed food around his plate. Lev rocked on the back legs of her chair, one arm slung over the backrest, and gestured for Danae to pour her more wine. For my part, I said nothing. I did not forgive the king in advance, nor did I assure him his secrets were safe with me. I simply waited for him to share the story, unbidden.

“The guardianship of this site, this house, was undertaken by my ancestors because of what stands on this sacred ground. Hidden to all those but my family, sworn to guard its secrets, is an entrance to the underworld,” Nicomedes said, implicitly including Danae in his definition of family. He paused, waiting for my reply, but I gave none. There are almost more entrances to the underworld than I can count and I did not see why this one needed the protection of humans. “Soteris became aware of its existence through means I cannot fathom and wishes to descend to the gates, that she might strike a deal with whoever awaits us there.”

“Alatus VII,” I said.

“Pardon?”

“Alatus VII. The underworld is their dominion and they have been known to wait at the gates.”

Nicomedes and Lycus’ fascination was unguarded. I saw the father in the son, the son in the father, through this sliver of knowledge they thought sacred. Lev narrowed her gaze, lips wet with wine, and shrugged.

“And Soteris’ soldiers know nothing of this?” I asked into the silence.

“They don’t. She is a wise woman, more strategic than most rulers; we wouldn’t still be fighting her, were that not true. She knows that if her soldiers, if her allies, find out about the entrance to the underworld, then she has no hope of being the one to reach it. The panic and desperation it would sow—oh, as I said, she is a wise woman. And so she spreads tales of broken treaties, of ancient slights and slaughtered, unavenged family members she never had.”

It was almost plausible. Nicomedes was pious in the ways that best served him and took his oaths and responsibilities to heart; he rose with each morning’s dawn, performed the waking rites for the god who does not sleep, and poured the first few drops from every drink onto the ground in offering. But war was scarcely so convoluted or noble as he made it out to be; if traced back far enough, the simple truth would be that someone was determined to get their way no matter the cost.

“And you’re confident you’ll win?” I asked.

“How could we not? We have an angel in our city,” Lycus burst in. “Not to mention our new allies.”

“The Cerbaens. So long as they do not infect our ranks with their cowardice,” Lev said.

Danae gave a soft, worn smile and looked to Nicomedes, knowing what would come next. Nicomedes faced his daughter and spoke of her as solemnly as he’d revealed the entrance to the underworld.

“We cannot lose. Our victory was prophesised when Lev was but a handful of days old; so long as she fights for us, Acrya will not fall.”

I did not ask to hear the omen. Lev let all four legs of her seat fall to the floor and turned her attention to the window. What had once been a wellspring of pride had dried into mere embarrassment.

“Three days after her birth, a laurel tree in the courtyard set ablaze in the dead of night. Had Lev not cried out, none would have stirred. The laurel, planted by my father’s father, would’ve burnt to nothing, and the fire would’ve spread through the regia,” Nicomedes said. Lycus nodded excitedly, eager to convince me of the truth, though Lev was far older than him. “I saw the omen in the ashes and burnt leaves: war. A war that could only be stopped by Lev, as the fire was.”

I did not question the story. What use was there in that? The king wanted it to be true and would fight with every fibre of his being to see it come to pass. There was little point in asking how the fire had started and why no guard could have seen it, considering the courtyard was regularly patrolled, and I did not tell him that wars were as common as the cries of a new-born.

“It is a good thing the arrow did not strike a hair’s width to the left,” I said. “Your daughter would not have made it back to the city, were luck not on her side.”

The king beamed, raised his cup, and said, “Another sign!”

Catching my eye, Lev offered something close to a snarl.

After the meal, after the servants had been allowed back into the room to clear the table, Lycus and Lev left with Danae. I remained with Nicomedes. He was ever grateful for my counsel, though in truth I offered little in the way of material aid, not being concerned with one side or the other’s victory. He valued having someone to talk to, an angel to confide in, and needed only the reassurance of hearing his thoughts spoken out loud.

That evening, he spoke of moving against a camp on the southern stretch of the river. It had previously not been a wise use of resources or soldiers, but Nicomedes’ scouts had brought word the soldiers there were building large, sea-worthy vessels to search out allies across distant shores.

Eventually, I left the king with his thoughts, letting him take my goodnight as all the approval he longed for. Outside, Lev awaited me in the dim corridor. She leant against a column, arms crossed over her chest, as though we had met by chance and she had not waited an hour or more for me.

“Do you want to see it?” Lev asked.

The question was half-accusation, an effort to goad me into doing or saying something she could not predict.

“The entrance to the underworld?” I said.

“What else?”

Lev did not wait for me. She marched down the corridor, leaning into the slight limp that was her latest source of pride; she would head to the hidden entrance to the underworld or her chambers, depending on whether my footsteps echoed behind her.

I followed. It was rude to refuse a king’s daughter anything. The instincts that saw her survive so many battles, if not always ensuring victory, allowed her to navigate the regia without alerting anyone to her presence. We went deep into the building, past the kitchens and cellars, to a quiet, forgotten corner and an unremarkable door. It was designed to be overlooked, even during the daylight.

Lev retrieved a key from around her neck, opened the door, and promptly locked it once we were both inside. The door led to a long, narrow room, unpaved, and once we stopped, I realised we were behind the throne room, on level with the dais.

“The regia was built around this, as the city was built around the regia,” Lev said, holding up a torch to an oaken door, little bigger than a barrel lid. It was covered in bronze with a large raised circle of metal at the centre, like a shield boss, and rested at a slight angle from the elevated rock and dirt it was built into. “This is why Acrya was founded on this site.”

Not for its elevation or the protection, trade, and life the river provided, or the fertile plains around it.

“You speak of Acrya as an ancient land, but nothing stood here when I was buried,” I said.

I placed a hand on the door and found the metal cool to the touch.

“And how long ago was that?”

“Two hundred and sixteen years ago,” I said, though I had neither felt nor seen the seasons pass.

Lev took the number in her stride. With a glance at me, she said, “It’s a good thing your wings were taken. You wouldn’t have fit down here, otherwise.”

None but the king had found the right way to ask me what had become of my wings, though Lev had bit her tongue more than once.

“Does it open?” I asked.

“It’s a door.”

Together, we rolled the door aside. A metal runner eased the work, but the door was far heavier than its height suggested. I soon found out why. The door was more than a foot thick, holding back a foul stench. Even Lev, unperturbed by her own sour blood, crinkled her nose as the noxious smell permeated the narrow space.

“Here it is. The entrance to the underworld, guarded by my family for, well, fewer than two hundred and sixteen years, I suppose,” Lev said.

Any awe in her voice was negated by her pinching her nose shut.

I knelt down, looking through the hole to the underworld. It was tight, but not impossible for someone to squeeze through, providing their wings had first been ripped off. Beyond the darkness was a steep descent into a deep cavern, where hidden pools of sulphur simmered in the earth.

“Well, Alatus?” Lev demanded.

I backed out, returned to my full height, and rolled the door into place with a slow, painful groan of bronze and wood.

“This isn’t an entrance to the underworld,” I said.

Lev cocked her head to the side. I think she had always known as much, thought it nothing but a rich story to give her family’s rule more weight, but she did not want to believe it when confronted with the truth she’d sought.

“Then what is it? My family has heard the voices of the dead for generations.”

“It is only gases and hot air rising,” I explained. “There are many entrances to the underworld but this is not one of them.”

Lev stepped closer, lifting her chin to meet my gaze.

“Then my family’s legacy is for nothing? We are guardians of a deep, reeking hole in the ground? We protect nothing and hold no secrets: is that what you’re saying?”

I placed a finger and thumb on her jaw, hoping it would ease the tension there.

It did not.

“You protect many things. You protect your people and your city. Your legacy is one of victory, of eventual peace,” I said. It was not said in kindness, for I knew Lev did not want that, but because the truth was almost too obvious for words. “And you have proven that you can keep secrets in a way so few mortals can.”

Lev snarled. She took my wrist, pushed my arm away, and marched back into the regia. The door closed behind her. For an instant, I thought I was to be buried and forgotten all over again, but the door remained unlocked. Lev was nowhere to be seen.

I passed a hand over the bronze lock, sealing it with a thought, and knew better than to share my truth with King Nicomedes. After all, Soteris was there for a war. She would not be deterred by the rumour that only an old cave laid in the centre of Acrya.

Subscribe now

tip jar

← Book One | Archive | Chapter II →

The divine was not divisible.

The words resounded as wet mud smoothed into warm flesh, though humanity has never understood their truth. Some devote their lives to dissecting each syllable, convoluting those holy words into a secret that serves them.

If the divine was not divisible, then anything the divine created was itself divine. If the divine was not divisible, it was beyond comprehension and so not worth heeding. If the divine was not divisible, there was no power to answer prayers. If the divine was not divisible, each part of divinity rent apart from itself was divine, too.

If divinity was not divisible, it could surely multiply.

Yet it was literal.

The divine was not divisible.

I was divided long before I awoke, though I had not slept. I had no need of it while my mind was quiet, my senses dulled. When the earth was broken apart, when the humans tore away the loam I was buried beneath, part of my body did not come with me.

My wings had been torn away. The hollow bones protruding from my shoulder blades stopped a handspan out, ending in a shattering of splintered shards. My wings, divided from me, were buried close by, but without divinity to preserve them, had decayed in my transient grave. Only a handful of feathers remained, trapped between layers of clay just so.

The humans grasped for them as they clung to my arms, lifting me free. The confusion, the joy, the commotion, was theirs; I stood as a statue, letting them wipe the dirt from my body and drape me in a chlamys, forgetting modesty was a human condition. Divided though I was, not a drop of divinity had deserted me.

Whispers of alatus, alatus, alatus turned to a chant, the crowd speaking as one to call me winged as they clung to my remaining feathers. I was moved across the forum, barely given time to take in the structures that surrounded me. When I was buried, when my wings were taken from me, there had been nothing but grassland all around, ripe for cattle or sheep. Now a great city stood on the plateau by the riverbend, already centuries old.

“Come, Lord Alatus, this way,” a woman said. Her name was Danae, a servant of the royal house, and there were none more important in the city than her. “The king is waiting for you.”

The great city was walled, bedecked with towers at each cardinal direction. I lifted my head towards the bright blue of the open sky and pushed my shoulder blades back. Could I have flown out of the city of gleaming colonnades and aged laurel trees without my wings? Human minds are small, limited. The world grows malleable before them, bending to their narrow perspectives. It was possible my severed wings only gave me flight, not my divinity, because I was in their presence.

There is power in thinking the world something that needs explaining.

There was much talk of prophecy and omens on my way to the regia, along with all the words humans use to confine the past and future to the present moment, complemented by an atmosphere of awe and celebration. I was left in the vast, mosaiced atrium of the royal house, built at the city’s highest point. The workers who had excavated me fell back, replaced by the women of the regia. Danae ordered them to bring basins of warm water and clean cloths, and I remained unmoving as they rubbed at my arms and face, not certain where dirt ended and flesh began.

I did not blame them for their hesitance. None had never seen an angel before.

The differences between us and humans are slight, once wings are removed from the equation. Where they are made of mud, we are carved from stone; a faint warmth permeates our grey skin and tiny cracks spread along the surface, some as fine as the lines on an aged face. Our arms are longer, our shoulders hunched, but we are human enough to stand comparison; or, rather, they are angel enough.

Soft light-grey contour feathers cover much of my body, spreading across the backs of my arms, my shoulders and collarbone, and winding up the side of my neck, where they fade to down and mix with the long, curved feathers that serve as my hair.

These feathers were attended to with brushes and much confusion. The women looked to me for direction, but the dirt lining my body was so minuscule, so light, after centuries encased in it that I could offer no guidance. I did not worry about being presentable enough to stand before their king and only hoped he was fit to meet me.

Royal soldiers swarmed the atrium, clad in bronze and leather armour. I did not recognise their insignias, the city being only wild, fertile grassland when I last walked the earth. These soldiers with their fine plumed helmets and polished spears had been no concern of their ancestors. The sunlight pouring through the open roof set their chest plates alight, turning simple metal to the molten glow of the earth’s core. For the briefest moment, hundreds of years of total darkness let me understand how the first humans had mistaken fire for a god in all its dancing, hungry splendour.

“Lord Alatus,” Danae said, drawing my eyes from the armour that ultimately would not protect the soldiers. Common-born though she was, her chiton was spun from fine wool and she wore a palla dyed in the same striking red as the soldiers’ plumes. “Our king will see you now.”

She gave a slight bow. Danae was used to being in the company of royals and wished to neither offend me by not being pious enough nor her king by revering another above him. For the thirty-three years she had served in the regia, she had kept the high house in a delicate balance and the city owed a great deal to her. It was she who advised the king, who had the ear of his children; she who ensured no ritual was neglected, no angel unattended.

I knew this, along with her name, because it was there to be known.

Danae led me through the crowds of humans lining the corridors, eager to catch a glimpse of an angel. At the arching entrance to the throne room, Danae knocked twice on the oaken door, paused, then used the heavy bronze ring to properly announce us. The king responded accordingly and called for me – their visitor – to enter.

I stepped into the chamber. The king had dismissed his usual retinue for the glory of speaking to an angel alone. He looked down at me from the dais, clad in ceremonial armour he had not expected to don that morning. King Nicomedes was a man born on a clear, still spring morning, a man who wore his dark, battle-hardened skin well. He was pious, for none sit upon the throne long without at least the pretence of piety, but it struck me as odd that he was not bewildered by the company of the divine.

He did not think us equals. I will not do him that injustice, but he thought himself equal to the situation. I appreciated that.

He spent a long, silent moment observing me, as though he had waited a hundred times for my arrival. He thought before he spoke. He had taken his throne by way of his mother, the old queen, and had grown comfortable in his role during a time of peace. When war came to his city gates seven years ago, he had thought it a test, a glory he owed to his people; now he was quietly exhausted by the routine of warfare, the victories and losses that could not be tallied against one another.

“I am blessed,” King Nicomedes said in time. “My house is blessed and my city is blessed. Tell me, Lord Angel, by what name are you known?”

It spoke well that he addressed me alone. He did not want or need an audience to perform the rites he did not yet know were sacred, and would speak little of our first meeting. What he did eventually share would be the truth.

I, in turn, shared my truth with him.

“I am Alatus IX,” I told him.

He tilted his head to the side. It was not one of the names humanity had given my kind in my absence.

“Alatus IX,” he repeated slowly.

“You may call me Novem.”

The king smiled, pleased by the privilege.

“I am Nicomedes, King of Acrya. You are welcome in my city, in my country, Novem. But for what reason did you come? Did you bring a message?”

How humans enjoy their gifts.

Golden caskets, carved jewels, fine-spun wool, carts of grain, missives; even an insult was eagerly accepted for all that would come of it. I had not once considered that the humans might expect something of me, much less think I had a specific purpose for entering their regia, slighting my open, empty hands. I had been pulled from the earth, splintered bones protruded from my back, and their king still expected a prophecy of me.

“I was buried in the earth,” I said.

“To what end?”

Now I tilted my head.

“Punishment, I suppose. To imprison me,” I said. Dropping the king’s gaze, I admired the red earth beneath my nails. “For the same reason my wings were taken.”

Nicomedes adjusted himself in his throne. The seat was not a comfortable one, though the wood was good, and he felt the rigidity of his position in our stilted conversation.

I still do not know what the humans of this age thought of angels before I arrived. Before I was unearthed. Were they truly so convinced that our divinity served no purpose but in the service of their kind, the waging of their wars, the balancing of their scales? Did they believe I had been buried for this very moment, rushing to them in their hour of need as their city was sieged, having no other purpose and so hibernating throughout the hundreds of years preceding it?

I have lived longer on this earth than all the ancestors of Nicomedes combined. I have soared high above the ocean’s roiling white foam without the spray weighing down my wings and I have been far below the surface, where the dead reign and the Boatman asks only that you reach into the black water.

Nicomedes did not consider himself a callous man. He was merely a king, plied with the promise of prophecy since boyhood.

When I offered no more in the way of explanation, he said, “Who did this to you, Novem? Surely it is sacrilege.”

And that I could not answer.

I wanted to, did not want to, needed to, knew it mattered not. I had been in the earth and no longer was. I had spread my wings and blotted out the sun but never would again. There are no women who measure your time against the thread they’ve spun, cutting your life short without letting it fray; there is only the present, the truth, and hollow thoughts in hollow bones.

“It is done with, King. I am here now,” I said, much to his delight.

He was busy fighting a war. He could not contend with that which had torn the wings from an angel.

“And you are most welcome here. Perhaps it is only coincidence that has brought us together, but I believe we were meant to meet one another. I believe my ancestors founded their city here for a reason they did not understand, though it compelled them so,” he said.

Relief became me. King Nicomedes did not expect anything material of me; he only wished me to remain in Acrya as a symbol of their strength and a sign of god’s favour. I needed only serve as a rumour, not offer up omens. I could’ve left that very day and never thought of the city again. I should’ve left, but the Acryai people had pulled me from the earth. I owed them a debt of gratitude and years or decades in their company would mean little to me.

I had not observed humanity up close in many centuries and could well learn something from my time there.

“I will stay in your city, King, for as long as your hospitality prevails,” I said.

The man rose to his feet with a groan of armour.

Placing a hand on his chest, he said, “Would you greet my people?”

We returned to the atrium, led by Danae. A sense of order had returned to the regia, though the excitement had not dissipated. I met with all the humans who wished to meet with me: the old generals who could only supervise the war from a distance, the king’s advisors who wished to offer me their services; the holy people who assisted the royal family in their rites and sacrifices, so intent on worshipping me that they somehow reverted to treating me as an equal; and Lycus, the king’s youngest child.

Lycus was a man of twenty-one, good humoured and generous. He only disobeyed his father through his utter disinterest in horse riding and weapon mastery. He’d avoided much of the war by betrothing himself to Gallus, the son of an allied king, and was forbidden by Acryai law from entering the battlefield.

All of this would be later told to me by the regia guards and the children not yet old enough to have learnt propriety, and I would pretend I had not already known it.

People clasped my hands and I theirs. They asked with a hope they did not believe could be fulfilled if they could touch my face and receive my blessing. I gave it, unfamiliar as I was with the ritual, and the people wept. Had the war ended that morning and peace ushered in an age of prosperity, they could not have been happier.

Humans take refuge in the abstract and unexpected when more mundane wishes cannot be granted.

I talked with the people. I shared my name and thanked them for their welcome. All the while, I watched sunlight spear through the open roof, casting its light on targets worthier than me. Armour gleamed. Pottery burnt along the painted golden lines. I have never appreciated the sun’s warmth, its illumination; that is the domain of Alatus III, and we have always worked best in avoidance of one another.

We could have been there for the rest of the day and all the night, for the whole city had gathered outside the regia. It had not taken long for word to spread, and humans were already gathering jars and pots of the dirt I had been buried within, thinking it would bring blessing upon their homes. Some had pried loose feathers free and were working away the silt and clay with tender care.

But the moment could not last.

Horns sounded beyond the city limits. The king paled and Lycus charged through the crowd before the gathered soldiers could react. The city gates were thrown open and promptly closed before those left in the atrium could settle on which horrific fate was about to befall them, and Nicomedes and I met with a half-dozen soldiers in the wide street leading to the regia.

These were not the soldiers of the city. They did not spend their days preening in the king’s house. They had seen battle, had taken from the enemy as the enemy took from them, and their bodies had known wounds worse than the scratches and dents across their battered armour.

Lycus stood amongst the soldiers, holding up a woman by the waist as she slung an arm around his shoulders. With the discord filling the city, the horns echoing endlessly, I could not discern anything about the woman beyond what I saw before me.

Blood followed her. It trailed from the arm that wasn’t around Lycus and poured from her left thigh. She gritted her teeth through the pain she knew so well, eyes dark and serious like the king’s.

“They are making a fuss over nothing,” she spat, but did not pull away from Lycus. “I could have been tended to in the field. Now it looks as though we have retreated into the city because we have retreated into the city.”

“Quiet, Lev,” Lycus hissed.

“Daughter,” Nicomedes said, placing a hand on her shoulder. “What happened? Danae, fetch the healers—make sure there is warm water and hyria root.”

Danae, whose heart pounded with the worry of more than a mere servant for her mistress, was already undertaking the orders before they were given. Lev watched her go, face softening for the briefest moment. The soldiers who’d accompanied Lev pushed back the citizens who’d come to stare upon an angel and been granted a wounded king’s daughter into the bargain.

In the atrium, deserted by all but Nicomedes, his children, and a handful of soldiers, Lev allowed herself to be lowered onto a stone bench. She hissed as she stretched out her leg, blood flowing as it never had before, and belatedly turned her gaze upon me.

She did not start. She was little more than irritated by two potentially fatal wounds and would not lose all composure at the sight of a wingless angel. Doubtless the blood loss did not allow her to understand what she was seeing; all Lev knew was that I was not like her.

“Tell me what happened, daughter,” Nicomedes implored.

“An ambush down at the marshes. We were to meet with a scouting party I sent out last month, but they were followed. There was a skirmish. In the thick of it, someone shot off two lucky arrows. Lucky, I say, as though they aren’t lying face-down in the marsh, turning it red.”

Lev spat at her feet, blood and phlegm staining the stone. Lycus reached for her hands and Lev slapped him away.

It was no shame to the king that his son was not a warrior. How could disappointment fester with a daughter like Lev, stony-faced as her mortal life poured from her? The royal emblem was embossed into her armour and she wore it over her chest as though it were her heart itself. Her skin, stained with dirt and sweat and blood, was seamed with scars, each defining her as much as her strong features, her angular nose.

“We removed the arrow from her arm, snapped off the shaft in her thigh, but we can’t get the arrowhead out,” Eleni, Lev’s closest companion, said. She was a youth compared to the king, though she was already greying and had a body like a bear.

“It’s fine. Bandage it up. Let the wound heal around it,” Lev said. “That will ensure I never make such a foolish mistake again.”

Eleni nodded in agreement, not understanding how the arrowhead would corrode within Lev’s flesh and poison her blood.

“It won’t heal if it keeps bleeding like that,” Lycus said.

“God! What would you know?”

Lycus lifted his hands, shuffling aside. The healers arrived, daunted more by their patient than the sheer volume of blood the men and their mops were already tending to. I do not know how Lev hadn’t fainted. Spite fuelled her and the frustration of having been wounded so lent her all the powers of denial.

A healer stepped forward. I held out a hand, stopping them.

“Novem?” King Nicomedes asked me.

I knelt before Lev, not needing the king’s permission. Lev stared at me with what would have been curiosity, were she in a better state of mind, and let her lead loll to the side. Her eyes were heavy, though they did not close, and she let me do as I would.

I pressed my fingers to the hard, tensing muscle of her thigh, finding the arrowhead buried as deeply as I had been. As the people of Acrya had pulled me from the earth, I freed the arrowhead, easing the widest part from the wound first. Lev grunted, but little more. The bloodied metal slid into my palm. Standing, I presented it to the king and let the healers do their work, padding, closing, and bandaging the wound.

“None of this has happened by chance,” Nicomedes declared. “You truly were sent to us by god.”

The king spoke the words not knowing that his god and my creator, the sculptor who had carved substance from the abstract, from feelings not yet given thought, the poet who had granted stone shape, was the one who had torn my wings away and buried me deep in the earth.

Subscribe now

tip jar

Welcome! Here you’ll find many of my novels available to read for free—either as they update or all in one go. These aren’t rough drafts: they’re the finished product, and posting them chapter-by-chapter will allow me to get more books out faster! Once the books have been posted in their entirety, they’ll be available to purchase as EPUBs on a pay-what-you-want model.

Updates begin 1^st November 2026; I post three times a month, on the 1^st, 11^th, and 21^st. Here’s the place to ask any questions!

(If you were previously reading Asterion, that’s currently undergoing a huge overhaul and rewrite, and will be back eventually! Thank you for all your support with those rough drafts, it really helped me learn the ropes with serialising my novels.)

BOOK ONE

The Angel of Acrya

ALATUS

After more than two centuries buried deep in the earth, the angel Novem is uncovered by the people of Acrya, a city seven years at war. Wingless though she is, splintered bones protruding from her back, they see her as a sure sign that victory will be theirs. Through prayer and fasting, Acrya’s king discovers that Novem must marry his daughter and heir, Lev, to secure Acrya’s future. Lev, a great warrior ever protecting her city, has nothing but contempt for Novem, but knows she cannot refuse her king or turn her back on the omens that have guided her life thus far.

All in Acrya celebrate the wedding and the end of the war it promises, never suspecting that it was god who tore Novem’s wings off and buried her beneath what would one day become the foundations of their city.

Chapter I

Chapter II

Chapter III

Chapter IV

Chapter V

Chapter VI

Chapter VII

Chapter VIII

Chapter IX

Chapter X

Chapter XI

Chapter XII

Chapter XIII

Chapter XIV

Chapter XV

Chapter XVI

Chapter XVII

Chapter XVIII

Chapter XIX

Chapter XX

Chapter XXI

Chapter XXII

Chapter XXIII

Chapter XXIV

Chapter XXV

Chapter XXVI

Chapter XXVII

Chapter XXVIII

Chapter XXIX

Chapter XXX

Chapter XXXI

Chapter XXXII

Chapter XXXIII

Chapter XXXIV

Chapter XXXV

Chapter XXXVI

Chapter XXXVII

EPILOGUS